Donors who coughed up hundreds of millions of dollars for Mitt Romney’s campaign were deliberately misled by the conservative media about the former Massachusetts governor’s chances of beating President Barack Obama, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough charged Monday.

"I’ll tell you, if I were a donor, my biggest problem would be that I was lied to. I was lied to by the . . . conservative entertainment establishment, the conservative media establishment,’’ Scarborough said on “Morning Joe.’’

“They lied to the donors, they lied to the base. They lied to everybody about how Romney was ahead and things were looking good in the Senate. The pollsters lied. Everybody lied.

“And so guys keep writing checks and find out the reason they went to Minnesota and Pennsylvania is because all of these people that were saying that Romney was going to win Ohio, they knew he was not going to win Ohio. They knew all along.’’

Scarborough did not name which media outlets he was referring to.

Scarborough’s rant came in reaction to a New York Times opinion piece by Frank Bruni about Karl Rove’s misguided proclamations about an assured Romney victory over President Barack Obama.